23536
Bluelight Crew
SPRING VALLEY — The day after a Rockland family said they were terrorized by heavily armed police who burst into their home looking for someone who didn't live there, the federal agency that organized the drug raid apologized for the incident.
. . .
At 5:30 a.m. Thursday, the family said police officers — their weapons drawn — barged into the house and pointed guns at the family.
. . .
The officers were screaming for someone named Michael, McKay said. When he tried to explain that no one named Michael lived at the house, McKay said the police pulled him outside his home in his underwear in the freezing cold.
McKay said officers yanked his eighth-grade daughter out of her bed at gunpoint. The girl later vomited, fainted and had an asthma attack.
. . .
Botched police raids at the wrong address are on the rise nationwide as law enforcement agencies become more aggressive in their pursuit of drug suspects, said a policy expert who has studied the phenomenon.
"The 30-year-long war on drugs uses war rhetoric, outfits police in war gear and gives them military weapons and instills in police officers a war mentality," said Radley Balko, who wrote a report, "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" in 2006 when he was an analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
"Now the police have an increasing willingness to take the metaphor literally."
His study found that reports of so-called "wrong-door" raids in which police — often heavily armed — enter the wrong home have increased dramatically over the past 20 years.
Similar incidents have occurred in other places in the Lower Hudson Valley.
Ivamae Green of Mount Vernon sued the city a year ago after she said police officers mistakenly raided her home and performed invasive body searches. The status of the case is unclear.
Yonkers settled a lawsuit with a building superintendent whose apartment was the scene of a police raid in 2007. Two police officers fired 15 shotgun rounds and killed three pit bulls in the small apartment where the 49-year-old man and his children were sleeping. Details of the settlement were unclear.
Another Yonkers family this week was awarded a $20,000 settlement from the city after a woman sued, claiming that police burst into her apartment in 2007 with weapons drawn in search of drugs.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Lucreshia Amory, her two children and a friend, accused the police of trespass, assault, false arrest, intimidation, extortion and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
. . .
Balko said more people are beginning to look critically at such raids.
"Maybe the public is finally getting fed up with these tactics and the use of SWAT teams for pot smokers and poker games," he said. "The problem is that it's going to continue because no politician wants to look soft on crime."
http://www.lohud.com/article/201101...d-Spring-Valley-man-says-no-one-contacted-him
. . .
At 5:30 a.m. Thursday, the family said police officers — their weapons drawn — barged into the house and pointed guns at the family.
. . .
The officers were screaming for someone named Michael, McKay said. When he tried to explain that no one named Michael lived at the house, McKay said the police pulled him outside his home in his underwear in the freezing cold.
McKay said officers yanked his eighth-grade daughter out of her bed at gunpoint. The girl later vomited, fainted and had an asthma attack.
. . .
Botched police raids at the wrong address are on the rise nationwide as law enforcement agencies become more aggressive in their pursuit of drug suspects, said a policy expert who has studied the phenomenon.
"The 30-year-long war on drugs uses war rhetoric, outfits police in war gear and gives them military weapons and instills in police officers a war mentality," said Radley Balko, who wrote a report, "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" in 2006 when he was an analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
"Now the police have an increasing willingness to take the metaphor literally."
His study found that reports of so-called "wrong-door" raids in which police — often heavily armed — enter the wrong home have increased dramatically over the past 20 years.
Similar incidents have occurred in other places in the Lower Hudson Valley.
Ivamae Green of Mount Vernon sued the city a year ago after she said police officers mistakenly raided her home and performed invasive body searches. The status of the case is unclear.
Yonkers settled a lawsuit with a building superintendent whose apartment was the scene of a police raid in 2007. Two police officers fired 15 shotgun rounds and killed three pit bulls in the small apartment where the 49-year-old man and his children were sleeping. Details of the settlement were unclear.
Another Yonkers family this week was awarded a $20,000 settlement from the city after a woman sued, claiming that police burst into her apartment in 2007 with weapons drawn in search of drugs.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Lucreshia Amory, her two children and a friend, accused the police of trespass, assault, false arrest, intimidation, extortion and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
. . .
Balko said more people are beginning to look critically at such raids.
"Maybe the public is finally getting fed up with these tactics and the use of SWAT teams for pot smokers and poker games," he said. "The problem is that it's going to continue because no politician wants to look soft on crime."
http://www.lohud.com/article/201101...d-Spring-Valley-man-says-no-one-contacted-him
